IFRS Interpretations Committee agenda decision

The Interpretation Committee was asked to clarify whether IAS 10 Events after the Reporting Period permits only one date of authorisation for issue when a set of financial statements is reissued in connection with an offering document.

The issue arose in jurisdictions in which securities laws and regulatory practices require an entity to reissue its previously issued annual financial statements in connection with an offering document, when the most recently filed interim financial statements reflect matters that are accounted for retrospectively under the applicable accounting standards. In these jurisdictions, securities law and regulatory practices do not require or permit the entity, in its reissued financial statements, to recognise events or transactions that occur between the time the financial statements were first authorised for issued and the time the financial statements are reissued, unless the adjustment is required by national regulation; instead security and regulatory practices require the entity to recognise in its reissued financial statements only those adjustments that would ordinarily be made to the comparatives in the following year's financial statements. These adjustments would include, for example, adjustments for changes in accounting policy that are applied retrospectively, but would not include changes in accounting estimates. This approach is called 'dual dating'. The submitter asked the Interpretations Committee to clarify whether IAS 10 permits only one date of authorisation for issue (ie 'dual dating' is not permitted) when considered within the context of reissuing previously issued financial statements in connection with an offering document.

The Interpretations Committee noted that the scope of IAS 10 is the accounting for, and disclosure of, events after the reporting period and that the objective of this Standard is to prescribe:

when an entity should adjust its financial statements for events after the reporting period; and

the disclosures that an entity should give about the date when the financial statements were authorised for issue and about events after the reporting period.

The Interpretations Committee also noted that financial statements prepared in accordance with IAS 10 should reflect all adjusting and non-adjusting events up to the date that the financial statements were authorised for issue.

The Interpretations Committee noted that IAS 10 does not address the presentation of re-issued financial statements in an offering document when the originally issued financial statements have not been withdrawn, but the re-issued financial statements are provided either as supplementary information or a re-presentation of the original financial statements in an offering document in accordance with regulatory requirements.

On the basis of the above and because the issue arises in multiple jurisdictions, each with particular securities laws and regulations which may dictate the form for re-presentations of financial statements, the Interpretations Committee decided not to add this issue to its agenda.